The first meeting of a collaboration on international communication standards for intelligent transport systems (ITS) will take place on Wednesday, 14 December, at ITU Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting is open and remote participation is offered.

Industry experts who gathered for the World Standards Cooperation's Fully Networked Car event at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year agreed that the next twenty years will see a huge shift towards ITS. Today’s communications capabilities give vehicles the potential to foresee and avoid collisions, navigate the quickest route to their destination, make use of up-to-the-minute traffic reports, identify the nearest available parking slot, minimise their carbon emissions and provide multimedia communications.Considerable resources have been invested in R&D, but the lack of global standards is widely regarded as a major impediment to large-scale deployment of ITS services and applications. This collaboration creates a global forum for the creation of a set of international communication standards needed for ITS to become a definitive feature of the modern automotive industry.

Advances in display technologies, declining manufacturing costs and a retail boom in emerging economies are all contributing to the rapid spread of large-scale high-definition display networks. But the proprietary nature of current digital signage solutions is restricting the integration of applications across different networks and vendors. Interoperable global standards will be crucial to the future development of this emerging market, unlocking enormous value not just for display system developers, retailers and newscasters, but for governments and the community at large.

Tomorrow’s dynamic signage can play a crucial civic role in areas like traffic management, public transport systems, safe crowd management at large events, control of people flows in public areas and private venues, and emergency response systems. But to do that effectively, standardized platforms will be crucial.

Technology offers practical means of cutting carbon emissionsGeneva, 25 November 2011 – ITU, together with a coalition of industry partners, will be working to convince delegates at the UN COP 17 climate change conference in Durban next week to harness the power of information and communication technology (ICT) to promote mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

Today’s advanced technologies can transform social, industrial and business processes to effect the changes needed to achieve sustainability. But while the potential of ICTs to make a real difference is widely recognized by the technology community and government ICT ministries, it is still far from being understood and embraced by environmental lobby groups and policymakers.

ITU, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP)/ Secretariat of the Basel Convention and the United Nations University (UNU), in collaboration with the Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative and the Center for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE), have launched a joint survey on e-waste.

This survey aims to collect detailed data on e-waste management, policies and standards; constructing a comprehensive overview of the current e-waste landscape and identifying future challenges in this realm. Such a mapping of the e-waste issue will establish a base upon which the exchange of e-waste information and best practices can occur, and will form a valuable tool in communicating the gravity of the problem and promoting collaborative work in the future development of policy and management of e-waste.The widespread use of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has raised public awareness of its positive effects such as the reduction of the digital divide, but also of the negative environmental and health effects associated with the inefficient waste management of end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE or e-waste).

There have been alarming reports of e-waste mismanagement in many countries, particularly in less developed nations and countries with economies in transition. E-waste is a significant contributor to the ICT industry’s impact on the environment, and urgent global action to address this issue is essential if the industry is to fulfill its commitment to a sustainable future.

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